John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. Like Senator Brennan, I am concerned about the imposition of this carbon tax on solid fuel from the point of view of potential job losses. I have been approached by suppliers of coal who have told me that what will happen, as happens in hard times, is that people will source their coal somewhere else - most likely from Northern Ireland, where the VAT rate on coal is only 5%, as distinct from 13.5% in the South. Unfortunately, the sulphur content of the coal in the North is 2%, whereas in the South it is 0.7%, so we will lose jobs, lose money to Northern Ireland and damage our environment even more with the use of this coal.

The Minister must accept that this has been one of the coldest winters in living memory and evidence of that is the current fodder crisis. If this carbon tax had been introduced this winter, I would have paid more in carbon tax than in property tax. We must also be conscious of the fact that we spend €211 million on the free fuel allowance every year. Will we lose that revenue North of the Border because coal will be cheaper there? We got a rebate on diesel costs, for which I campaigned for a long time, and we saw how effective that was. The economy was losing millions of euro because hauliers were going to Europe with one quarter of a tank of diesel to fill up there. We had to address that by introducing a diesel rebate. We need to look at how we are dealing with this carbon tax in the same way, as jobs will be lost. Sometimes we make decisions that backfire, and it would be extremely wise to revisit this one because otherwise we will learn the hard way.